4 Popular Diet Plans That Can Be Vegetarian

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By Margaret Badore for DietsInReview.com

Although cutting meat from your diet is often promoted as a good weight-loss strategy, it’s no guarantee of dropping pounds. After all, sugar is both vegetarian and vegan, and the explosion of vegan cupcake cookbooks is proof that you can cut all animal products out of your diet and still eat a lot of dessert.

We all know that vegetables make up the basis of a healthy diet, but finding a plan that you can stick to may be a challenge. Vegetarians who want to lose weight may turn to the structure and support of a commercial diet plan. And while it’s not openly promoted, a variety of popular weight-loss plans do accommodate the vegetarian lifestyle.

Weight Watchers

As most people know, Weight Watchers is organized around PointsPlus values instead of calories. There are no foods that are forbidden on Weight Watchers, as long as you stay within your PointsPlus limit for the day. The way points are assigned to foods incentivizes participants in the program to eat foods that are less dense in calories and more high in fiber. This makes Weight Watchers an extremely flexible plan, and it easily accommodates a range of health and lifestyle needs, including vegetarians. No matter if you choose to follow the program online or sign up for meetings in your area, Weight Watchers has lots of recipes for vegetarians, and also provides information on how to stay well-nourished while losing weight on a plant-based diet.

Nutrisystem

Nurtrisystem is a meal delivery weight-loss program, which means that low-calorie, nutritionally-balanced meals will be delivered right to your home. Nutrisystem offers vegetarian plans for both men and women. There are over 90 meatless meals that feature foods that have a low-glycemic index to help you feel full longer and won’t cause your blood sugar to spike.

If you’re looking for a meal delivery diet that specializes in vegan meals, you may also want to consider Gobble Green. This meal delivery service features foods that are entirely free of animal products.

South Beach Diet

The South Beach Diet is a three-phase weight-loss program created by Dr. Arthur Agatston, a cardiologist. It’s often referred to as a low-carb diet, because the first phase eliminates all refined starches and sugars. The diet emphasizes lean protein, which means that vegetarians can expect to eat plenty of tofu, beans and other meat-substitutes, in addition to high-fiber vegetables, low-fat dairy and unsaturated fats such as avocados, nuts and olives. Your options may be a little more limited than on Weight Watchers, but South Beach certainly has lots of ways to accommodate a meat-free lifestyle.

17 Day Diet

Launched last winter, The 17 Day Diet, by Dr. Mike Moreno, is one of the most popular new diets of this year. The diet features four 17-day cycles, which are designed to give users a quick start to their weight loss followed by steady progression towards a goal weight. Of course, with any diet this popular, people want to know if there are vegetarian-friendly options. Like the South Beach Diet, The 17 Day Diet places a lot of importance on sources of lean protein. For vegetarians, this will mean tofu, low-fat cheese, egg whites, beans, legumes and low-fat dairy. Veggie burgers and black bean burgers are also great options for people who don’t eat meat and are interested in this diet. In the first cycle, which is the most strict, some vegetarians may feel their options are somewhat limited, but as more foods are introduced in later cycles this is less of a problem.

Dukan Diet

The controversial Dukan Diet gained much attention after rumor spread that it was favored by Kate Middleton before her wedding. This ultra-low carb diet is one plan that would be extremely challenging for vegetarians. It not only excludes most kinds of fruit and grains, but also starchy vegetables. On the FAQ section of the UK Dukan Diet site, the answer to the question regarding vegetarianism begins: “First of all, are you really sure you refuse meat and fish?” Although there are guidelines for soy-based meat substitutes, eggs, and dairy products, more vegetarians would find this diet way too restrictive.

The biggest single most important factor for maintaining a healthy weight is very, very simple-count calories.

No matter what diet plan you follow, they restrict the number of calories you put into your body.

If you follow a healthy diet, you don't even need to count calories, because eating healthy if a very, very filling and satisfying diet that is naturally in the right proportion of calories just for you.

All diet plans end, then you have to learn to live well on a healthy diet if you want to maintain the weight loss.

It really isn't as hard as it seems. I would recommend for those who are looking to eat alot of tasty, really tasty food at a lot less calories is to look at the author of the Hungry Girl.

She is on the Dr. Oz. show frequently, and she has some amazingly clever substitutes that are virtually as tasty as the real deal in plenty of quantity. Big plates of pasta with marinara sauce. The trick, use shirataki noodles, they are virtually calorie free.